A Pilgrim's Tale and FLOODING THE FIRST

Well, on the last day before half-term (a 1-week-holiday) I had the pleasure to accompany the Year 7s on their trip to St. Alban's. As I teach most of them anyway on a Friday it was reasonable that I came along as well. I had never been to St. Alban's which is apparently just 40 min drive from the school, but I was looking forward to go. The weather god was decent as well and it was sunny but not too hot.

First we visited the ruins of the great Roman theatre and the Museum with its gorgeous mosaics. The girls had to complete a questionaire and I have to admit I did not know all the answers either!

As you can imagine, the girls were not too keen to fill in questionaires, but they managed in the end and as a treat we had lunch in the big park surrounding the museum. After some nervwracking spider-attacks including high pitched screams on the girls side we made our way through the park towards the cathedral where we were to dress as pilgrims. The girls are learning about life in the Middle Ages at the moment and so they were pretending to be pilgrims and then get a tour through the cathedral and the monastery. It was fun, I can tell you and I guess the girls enjoyed it as well. It was definitely more interesting than just walking through the cathedral and the guide explains this and that. Fortunately the teachers did not have to dress up - even though I would have liked it, but I guess this is because I am 25 years younger than the rest of the teachers!

Unfortunately there was a funeral service in part of the cathedral and therefore we were not able to visit the whole place, but we at least got a look on St. Alban's shrine in the centre. I am quite sure if you open it today, one will find just the bones of some pirate in it, I do not believe that with all the relic-fuss in former times that the remains of holy people actually stayed in their graves - later on they were replaced or probably the people who stole them just put some other bones in! But as a good catholic I obviously believe in the "deeper meaning" of it all ;-)

The trip to St. Alban's was all in all great fun. However, I was a bit weary because I knew Christoph was on the way and I was not sure if I were back in time to meet him. He was late so I was on time! I should tell you, however, that I had thoroughly the night before so everything was ready for Christoph and Vanessa, who was also to arrive in the evening for our trip to Wales. When I came back from St. Alban's I found a note on my door that some people from the works the departement had to go in my flat in order to get the boiler working (the school heating system was down for the holidays for repair). Unfortunately it turned out that the overflooding device was broken in my boiler and therefore my bathroom was FLOODED and all my cleaning the night before had been in vain. Great! So I immediately phoned the duty engineer and he came round to turn it off. He put me back on the school system (which meant hot water only until 10pm this very evening) and promised to get it fixed till I get back from Wales. Alright I thought, what next?

One of the teachers had kindly offered to give me a lift to Tolpits Garage in Watford to pick up the car that we had hired. That fortunately worked out alright, apart from the fact that I ordered a Ford Fiesta and got a Ford Focus (twice upgraded!). Sure I can manage, I thought, but I was dreading to go back. Somehow I managed to get the car back to RMS, even though it was a strange feeling to have the steering wheel and the gear in the wrong place and drive on the left of course! When I finally made it back I was just in time to meet Christoph and we soon made our first car trip to the station to pick up Vanessa and then go to Tesco to get everything for our Wales trip.

Later on that night we cooked a Tikka Massala and had some salad with it and went to bed "early" as we wanted to start at 8 next morning! But that is stuff for another post!